I completely agree with you that consistency is critical. It has been a consistent request/response from students for years. I just listened to a webinar where another college decided to adopt consistent course layouts and the calls from students confused about their courses immediately dropped. I’ve always wondered how creating confusion for students falls into an academic freedom argument but I’d rather hear faculty discuss it.

This will probably set off a “discussion” about academic freedom, but it might be a good idea for PCC to have a required D2L format (perhaps with a couple of alternate formats) for classes. My students have expressed confusion and stress caused by the fact that every class is organized differently and when they have three or four classes, it is overwhelming. By the time they get it figured out, a substantial part of the term has passed.

Our wonderful on line learning professionals have made recommendations and best practices widely available but faculty have been also been overwhelmed and not able to take full advantage of those resources. A choice of two or three formats would smooth things for everyone.